Material is a New York-based direct-to-consumer kitchenware company building beautifully designed, non-toxic, and sustainably made cooking essentials that are meant to last a lifetime. Founded in 2017 by Eunice Byun and Dave Nguyen, the brand pairs minimalist design with thoughtful materials - Japanese steel knives, copper-core pans, and the reBoard cutting board made from recycled plastic scraps and sugarcane - to make everyday cooking simpler and more pleasurable.
Alloy Health is a direct-to-consumer women's telehealth company built to fix how medicine treats menopause. Founded by Anne Fulenwider and Monica Molenaar, Alloy connects women in perimenopause and menopause with menopause-trained doctors and a full menu of FDA-approved, science-backed treatments - hormone replacement therapy, vaginal estrogen, plus hair, skin, sexual-wellness, gut and weight solutions - delivered to the door via an asynchronous platform with a flat $50 annual membership. The company raised a $16M Series A in November 2024 and reached profitability while serving women historically dismissed by the healthcare system.
Function of Beauty is a New York-based beauty company that makes personalized hair, skin, and body care products. Customers take an online quiz about their hair type, goals, and preferences, and the company's in-house technology mixes a formula made to order - down to color and scent. Founded in 2015 out of MIT, it helped popularize mass personalization in beauty and has since expanded from a pure DTC model into major retailers like Target and CVS.
M.M.LaFleur is a New York-based direct-to-consumer womenswear brand that coined the term 'Power Casual' and built its business around solving a single problem: getting ambitious women dressed for work without wasting their time. Founded in 2013 by Sarah LaFleur, designer Miyako Nakamura, and Narie Foster, the company pairs thoughtfully engineered professional clothing with a free personal-styling service called Bento that curates a box of pieces around each customer. After a near-collapse during the pandemic, the company was rescued by a syndicate of women investors and refocused on the wardrobe needs of a hybrid working world.
Margaux is a New York-based, female-founded footwear brand making handcrafted women's shoes in a family-owned Spanish factory. Co-founded in 2015 by Harvard friends Alexa Buckley and Sarah Pierson, the brand is built around a simple idea most of the industry ignored: women should not have to choose between a shoe that fits and a shoe they love. Margaux offers one of the widest size ranges in the business (roughly US 3-14) across narrow, medium and wide widths, plus a fit concierge - turning sizing into a service rather than a compromise. Its bestseller, The Demi ballet flat, has racked up thousands of glowing reviews and a Vogue following.
Pair Eyewear is a New York-based direct-to-consumer eyewear company that reinvented glasses as a customizable, collectible accessory. Its patented system pairs an affordable base frame with magnetic snap-on 'Top Frames' - over 1,000 designs spanning licensed collaborations with Disney, Marvel, the NFL, and The Met - so a single pair of glasses can change with your mood, outfit, or favorite team. Founded by Stanford grads Sophia Edelstein and Nathan Kondamuri in 2017, Pair has sold millions of Top Frames, built one of the most automated lens labs in the U.S., and raised roughly $148M to scale a recurring-revenue model in an industry long defined by buy-once-every-two-years inertia.
Prose is a New York-based beauty-tech company that makes custom haircare and skincare to order. An online consultation feeds a proprietary AI engine that blends from a library of natural ingredients into formulas tailored to each customer's hair, scalp, skin, lifestyle, and even local climate. Founded in 2017 by ex-L'Oreal and Phyto executives, Prose is a Certified B Corporation, a Public Benefit Corporation, and a carbon-neutral brand that has produced millions of bespoke products and reached profitability while expanding into skincare and licensing its technology stack, Singular.
Will Nitze is the founder and CEO of IQBAR, a brain-and-body nutrition brand he built from a Kickstarter campaign into a nine-figure CPG company selling plant-based protein bars, hydration mixes, and instant coffee in more than 10,000 retail doors. A Harvard psychology and neuroscience graduate who once sold software to oil-and-gas companies, he formulated his first products with no food-science background, scaled IQBAR past 100 million bars sold, and now hosts the founder podcast Eating Glass.
Alexa Buckley is the co-founder and co-CEO of Margaux, the New York footwear label she started at 22 with her Harvard roommate Sarah Pierson. Margaux fixes a problem most brands ignore - fit - by offering made-to-order shoes in three widths and an extended size run, handmade in Spain and sold direct to consumers. The pitch grew out of the 'shoe shuffle' the two women watched office workers perform: pretty heels in a bag, ugly commuter flats on their feet. Buckley has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30 and has built Margaux into a brand that has raised millions across Seed through Series B rounds.
Arnaud Plas is the co-founder and CEO of Prose, the New York based beauty-tech company that makes custom haircare and skincare to order, one formula per person. A former L'Oreal digital and e-commerce executive, he left big CPG in 2017 to attack the one-size-fits-all model with AI-driven consultations and a software-run, make-after-you-buy factory. Under his watch Prose reached profitability in 2023, sold more than 10 million bespoke products, and pushed net sales past $140 million on its way to an estimated $160 million in 2024.
Monica Belsito is the CEO of Function of Beauty, the made-to-order personal care company that turns an online quiz into a custom bottle of shampoo. She took the top job in July 2025 after a career spent building consumer brands that get acquired: founding CMO at feminine-care brand LOLA, CMO at hummus maker Sabra (bought by PepsiCo in 2024), and senior brand manager at Dollar Shave Club before its $1 billion sale to Unilever. A Georgetown grad and Harvard MBA who started in crisis PR and Colgate's management program, she now steers Function of Beauty's push from DTC into shelves at Target, Sephora, Walmart, and Amazon.
Sarah Miyazawa LaFleur is the founder and CEO of M.M.LaFleur, the New York workwear brand she named after her mother and built to take the guesswork out of getting dressed for professional women. A Harvard graduate who walked away from a private equity job after four months, she launched the company in 2013 with designer Miyako Nakamura and Narie Foster, popularized the curated Bento Box, and later coined the post-pandemic dress code she calls Power Casual.
Sophia Edelstein is the co-founder and co-CEO of Pair Eyewear, the direct-to-consumer brand that turned eyeglasses into a fashion accessory you can swap as fast as your mood. She and Stanford classmate Nathan Kondamuri started the company in their senior year after interviewing 400 families about why kids hate their glasses, and built it into a vertically integrated eyewear company with the most automated lens lab in the United States. By late 2023 the company had raised roughly $145 million, grown revenue 24x in three years, and sold millions of interchangeable 'Top Frames'. Edelstein leads brand, creative, web and product design while sharing the CEO seat in one of the more visible co-CEO partnerships in consumer tech.
a.k.a. Brands is a portfolio operator of next-generation, digitally native fashion brands, including Princess Polly, Culture Kings, Petal & Pup and mnml. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Francisco, it reaches Gen Z and millennial shoppers who discover fashion on social media and primarily buy online. A data-driven 'test and repeat' merchandising model lets its brands launch fresh, exclusive styles weekly. The company trades on the NYSE under the ticker AKA and reported net sales of $600.2 million in fiscal 2025.
Allbirds is a San Francisco footwear and apparel company that built a global brand on wool sneakers and a sustainability-first ethos. Co-founded in 2015 by former pro footballer Tim Brown and biotech engineer Joey Zwillinger, it turned superfine merino wool, eucalyptus tree fiber and sugarcane into low-carbon shoes, became the first fashion brand to print a carbon footprint on its products, and reached a $4 billion valuation at its 2021 IPO. After years of declining sales, store closures and a stock collapse, Allbirds agreed in March 2026 to sell its brand and assets to American Exchange Group for roughly $39 million.
Blue Bottle Coffee is an Oakland-born specialty roaster and cafe chain that helped define the third-wave coffee movement. Founded in 2002 by clarinetist James Freeman, it built a reputation on freshly roasted single-origin beans, an obsessive 48-hour freshness rule, and a spare, Japanese-influenced cafe aesthetic. It now runs roughly 140 cafes across the US and Asia plus a sizable e-commerce and subscription business, and changed hands in 2026 when Centurium Capital agreed to buy its retail operations from Nestle.
Levi Strauss & Co. is the San Francisco apparel company that invented the blue jean in 1873 and has spent 170-plus years turning a piece of workwear into a global wardrobe staple. Today it owns the Levi's, Dockers, Beyond Yoga and Denizen brands, sells in more than 110 countries, and is reinventing itself under CEO Michelle Gass as a direct-to-consumer denim lifestyle brand while pushing water-saving manufacturing across its supply chain.
Williams-Sonoma, Inc. is a San Francisco-based, vertically integrated specialty retailer of premium home furnishings and cookware. From a single 1956 cookware shop in Sonoma, California, it grew into a portfolio of in-house-designed brands - Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, Pottery Barn Teen, West Elm, Williams Sonoma Home, Rejuvenation, Mark and Graham, and GreenRow - sold through e-commerce, catalogs, retail stores, and a growing B2B business. It is one of the largest digital-first home retailers in the United States, with roughly $7.7-7.9 billion in annual revenue.
Dolls Kill is a San Francisco-based online retailer for self-proclaimed misfits - selling rave, goth, y2k, kawaii and festival-ready apparel to a global Gen Z audience. Founded in 2011 by ex-DJ Shoddy Lynn and entrepreneur Bobby Farahi, the brand grew from selling fox tails out of a backpack into a Sequoia-backed, ~$50M-revenue digital boutique that runs its own house labels (Current Mood, Sugar Thrillz, Widow) alongside outside brands.
Hint Inc. makes unsweetened, fruit-infused water with zero sugar, zero sweeteners, and zero calories. Founded in San Francisco in 2005 by Kara Goldin, Hint grew from a personal health experiment into the #1 unsweetened flavored still water brand in the U.S. The company sells over 25 flavors through major retailers like Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, and Costco, as well as directly through its website — where DTC now represents more than 50% of revenue. With $91M+ raised and an annual revenue of approximately $143M, Hint has quietly built one of the most compelling better-for-you beverage brands in America.
Karla Gallardo is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cuyana, a San Francisco-based sustainable fashion brand built on the philosophy of 'fewer, better things.' Born in Ecuador and educated at Brown University and Stanford GSB, she co-founded Cuyana in 2011 with Shilpa Shah to create timeless, high-quality women's essentials through ethical, transparent supply chains. Under her leadership, Cuyana has grown to 160+ employees, raised $44.8M in funding (including a $30M Series C), and built a loyal customer base that includes Meghan Markle and Jessica Alba. The company achieves a remarkable 90% full-price sell-through rate — rare in fashion — and has been recognized for pioneering sustainable luxury retail in the U.S.
Quince is a San Francisco e-commerce company that sells luxury-grade essentials - Mongolian cashmere, washable silk, Italian leather, Turkish cotton - at prices that look like typos. It does this by skipping the wholesale layer entirely and shipping straight from partner factories using its own Manufacturer-to-Consumer (M2C) operating system.
Shilpa Shah is the co-founder and Chief Experience Officer of Cuyana, the San Francisco-based sustainable luxury fashion brand built around two words: fewer, better. A UC Berkeley-trained UX designer who spent a decade building interfaces for Disney, AT&T, and Sun Microsystems before pivoting to business school at 32 — pregnant during her first semester — Shah co-founded Cuyana in 2011 with Karla Gallardo. The company has grown into a cult-favorite direct-to-consumer brand with 7 retail locations, 150+ employees, celebrity fans including Jessica Alba and Ayesha Curry, and $30 million in Series C funding from H.I.G. Capital. At Cuyana, Shah is the architect of the customer experience, championing quality over quantity in an industry obsessed with the opposite.
Sid Gupta is the Co-Founder and CEO of Quince, a San Francisco-based manufacturer-to-consumer (M2C) brand that sells luxury-quality cashmere, silk, and home goods at a fraction of traditional retail prices. Founded in 2018 alongside his wife Zunu Mittal and CTO Sourabh Mahajan, Quince reached a $10.1 billion valuation in March 2026 after raising a $500M Series E led by Iconiq Capital. Before Quince, Gupta built Lolli & Pops, a specialty candy retail chain, from 11 struggling locations to nearly 100 stores across 28 states. A University of Chicago economics graduate and Stanford MBA, he has spent his career dissecting pricing inefficiencies in consumer retail - and building businesses to exploit them.
CPAP.com is the largest internet retailer of CPAP equipment for sleep apnea treatment, founded in 1999 by Johnny Goodman and his father in Stafford, Texas. The family-owned e-commerce company carries over 1,000 products including CPAP machines, BiPAP machines, masks, and accessories from all major brands, helping more than 2.3 million people find effective sleep apnea therapy. With 25+ years of experience, a community of 40,000+ members on CPAPtalk.com, and institutional backing from Cathay Capital and The Silverfern Group, CPAP.com has become the go-to destination for both new and experienced sleep apnea patients navigating their treatment journey.
Ilana Stern is a General Partner at Peterson Ventures, a seed-stage venture firm based in Salt Lake City, Utah. A Stanford GSB alumna and former founder, she built and sold Weddington Way - a direct-to-consumer bridal fashion platform - to Gap Inc. in 2016 before joining Peterson Ventures in 2019 as its first San Francisco-based partner. She invests primarily in early-stage consumer, enterprise, and healthcare technology companies, while also lecturing at Stanford GSB and writing a Substack newsletter called 'View from the Bottom.'
Jim Ritchie is the CEO and co-founder of AEONrv, a Reno, Nevada-based company building high-tech, all-season, electric-cabin recreational vehicles on Ford Transit platforms. A Silicon Valley veteran with 30+ years in technology, Jim started AEONrv as a personal project after growing frustrated with the state of existing RV options - he wanted something that could handle ski mountains in winter and desert trails in summer without propane systems or dealer hassles. What began as a one-off custom build evolved into Nevada's 2025 Manufacturing Company of the Year, with 100+ vehicles delivered, 70+ employees, and plans to build the world's most automated RV manufacturing plant.
Nico Perdomo is the Guatemalan-American co-founder and CEO of Catch, a San Francisco-based fintech startup that built an alternative payment and rewards platform for direct-to-consumer brands. A Stanford Symbolic Systems graduate who spent time building products at LinkedIn and Affirm, he launched Catch in 2020 with the thesis that every payment transaction should delight the customer. Backed by Sequoia, Index Ventures, and Forerunner, Catch grew to serve hundreds of thousands of primarily Gen Z shoppers across nearly 100 brand partners including Rare Beauty, PacSun, and SoulCycle before ceasing operations in April 2025.
Kenneth Chan is a serial internet entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Tobi, a women's fast-fashion e-commerce brand based in South San Francisco. Chan built Tobi from the ground up as a vertically integrated fashion-tech company capable of taking a garment from sketch to delivery in under eight weeks. With roots in the dot-com era — having co-founded Everyone.net (a top-50 website with 25M+ users) and scaled Connexus/Netblue to a $100M internet marketing firm — Chan brought Silicon Valley engineering discipline to the traditionally analog fashion industry. Tobi serves customers across 100+ countries with trendy women's apparel, leveraging proprietary e-commerce infrastructure and data-driven trend forecasting. Chan was named an Apparel Magazine 2019 Top Innovator for his work reimagining mobile commerce at Tobi.
Lori Coulter is the co-founder, CEO, and President of Summersalt, the St. Louis-based direct-to-consumer swimwear and apparel brand built on data from 1.5 million body measurements. She turned a pre-teen concession stand hustle into a generation-defining brand that has sold over 4 million garments, raised $30M+, and landed in Vogue, Elle, and Forbes. She now serves as an Operator Advisor at Redbud VC and adjunct faculty at Washington University's Olin Business School, championing equitable venture funding for female founders.